Dorothy Livesay -- Mathematics poem

[David Dalton]

Here is a poem by Dorothy Livesay from her book
of selected poems, The Self-Completing Tree.

--------------
Mathematics

I want to play the great game, darling
but only you can play it to perfection:
Much talk..no bed. Some talk..some bed
no talk..all bed; and talk tomorrow.

I meant to play the great game, darling
and hold your bones deep to the root of one
I meant to play the great game, darling
but the heart for it is gone.
-----------------

How do you interpret the poem? In my book I
wrote down lemniscate root of one, perhaps
related to my theory of lemniscate time, but I
have crossed it out. I also wrote down eighth root
of one, where one can be expressed as
e^{2*n*pi*i}, and there are eight eighth roots of one
(there are one two square roots, 1 and -1).

Of course the heart could also be a cardioid.

I’ll think about it some more but just wanted to
put it forward for discussion for now.

Is anyone else on here familiar with Dorothy Livesay?

Followup-To set to alt.arts.poetry.comments .

--
https://www.nfld.com/~dalton/dtales.html Salmon on the Thorns (mystic page)
"And the cart is on a wheel; And the wheel is on a hill;
And the hill is shifting sand; And inside these laws we stand” (Ferron)

[Will Dockery]

No, this is the first poem I've seen from her, enjoyable read.

> Followup-To set to alt.arts.poetry.comments .

Hello again David, I see how a "follow-up" works, now. The post in both rec.arts.poems will show up in alt.arts.poetry.comments.

🙂

[George J. Dance]

I think every Canadian on your list knows who she is. We studied her in uni, and I still have some of her work in a book I've kept from those days, Milton Wilson's /Poets between the Wars/. But I can't say I'm familiar with her work; I can't remember anything of hers that made an impression on me.

Nor do I seek out her poems; to read: I'd rather read public domain work I could share on my blog if I liked it. If the government extends the copyright, Livesay's work won't be p.d. until our bicentennial.

> Followup-To set to alt.arts.poetry.comments .

If you find aapc is too cluttered, and your threads are generating more heat than light there, feel free to change your Followup to RAP. Your posts are welcome here.

[Will Dockery]

She's new to me, definitely worth reading and learning about, thanks again David.

> Nor do I seek out her poems; to read: I'd rather read public domain work I could share on my blog if I liked it. If the government extends the copyright, Livesay's work won't be p.d. until our bicentennial.
> > Followup-To set to alt.arts.poetry.comments .
> If you find aapc is too cluttered, and your threads are generating more heat than light there, feel free to change your Followup to RAP. Your posts are welcome here.
> > --
> > https://www.nfld.com/~dalton/dtales.html Salmon on the Thorns (mystic page)
> > "And the cart is on a wheel; And the wheel is on a hill;
> > And the hill is shifting sand; And inside these laws we stand” (Ferron)

...

[David Dalton]

On Sep 2, 2023, George J. Dance wrote
(in article<aaccb07d-10a5-46e2...@googlegroups.com>):

aapc does seem to have a higher proportion of noise/flame wars
to poetry and discussion of it than RAP, but I may continue to post,
infrequently, to both.

[George J. Dance]

I can't call her well-known in Canada -- few poets are -- but her status as the first Canadian female modern poet has given her an iconic status in both Canlit and feminist studies. That's not to make light of her work; what I've read of it I've liked.

I've got an article on her on PPP of course, which is mainly the Wikipedia one with odds and ends added; the main addition is a good bibiliography of her work from the U of Athabasca. I've tried to add her work to it as links, but given her copyright status they're hard to find. I did find and embed two videos, neither of them read by her. (You can see those by clicking the "See Also" link in the wiki article):
https://pennyspoetry.fandom.com/wiki/Dorothy_Livesay#See_also